An active member of the Union Labor Party,[1] he was appointed to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors by Mayor P. H. McCarthy in 1911.

[3] In 1912, he was the secretary of the San Francisco Labor Council (he was a member of the Iron Molder's Union).

In 1912, Nolan was elected as a Bull Moose Republican[4][5] to the 63rd United States Congress.

[6] San Francisco's first labor congressman in eight years, he was a staunch progressive reelected to the four succeeding Congresses.

He had been re-elected in 1922 to the 68th United States Congress before he died in San Francisco, California on November 18, 1922.